The present invention relates in general to oximeters, and in particular to the selection of ensemble averaging weights used for ensemble averaging of signals that include detected waveforms from a pulse oximeter.
A pulse oximeter is typically used to measure various blood characteristics including the blood oxygen saturation of hemoglobin in arterial blood and the pulse rate of the patient. Measurement of these characteristics has been accomplished by use of a non-invasive sensor that passes light through a portion of a patient's blood perfused tissue and photo-electrically senses the absorption and scattering of light in such tissue. The amount of light absorbed and scattered is then used to estimate the amount of blood constituent in the tissue using various algorithms known in the art. The “pulse” in pulse oximetry comes from the time varying amount of arterial blood in the tissue during a cardiac cycle. The signal processed from the sensed optical measurement is the familiar plethysmographic waveform, which corresponds with the cyclic attenuation of optical energy through a portion of a patient's blood perfused tissue.
Ensemble averaging, which is a temporal averaging scheme, involves the use of weighting factors. In a pulse oximeter, ensemble averaging is used to calculate a weighted average of new samples and previous ensemble-averaged samples from one pulse-period earlier. Weights selected and/or used for ensemble averaging have a significant effect on the ensemble averaging process. Such weights may be uniformly selected, or they may be based on the characteristics of the signals that are being ensemble averaged. For example, the Conlon U.S. Pat. No. 4,690,126 discloses ensemble averaging where different weights are assigned to different pulses and a composite, averaged pulse waveform is used to calculate oxygen saturation. Conlon's signal metrics for adjusting ensemble-averaging weights are based on a measure of the degree of motion artifact, a measure of the degree of low perfusion (e.g., pulse amplitude below a threshold), and pulse rate.
However, it is desirable to provide a more flexible and more robust methodology for the selection of ensemble averaging weights used for ensemble averaging of signals that include detected waveforms from a pulse oximeter.